There was a long silence, broken once more by that far, wailing cry on the
wind. Miss Armitage started. She laid her hand on Tisdale's shoulder, the
nearest object, in a tightening grip, while for a breathless moment she
leaned forward, trying to penetrate the darkness of the gorge. The action
seemed to remind him of her presence, and he turned to look at her.
"Frightened again?" he asked.
Her hand fell; she settled back in her seat. "N-o, not very much, but it
took me off guard. It sounds so desolate, so--so--supernatural; like the
cry of a doomed soul."
Tisdale smiled. "That describes it, but you never have heard it at close
range."
She shivered; her glance moved again in apprehension to the
night-enshrouded Pass. "Have you, Mr. Tisdale?"
"Yes, lonesome nights by a mountain camp-fire, with just the wind piping
down a ravine, or a cataract breaking over a spur to fill the interlude."
"Oh, that must have been terrifying," and the shiver crept into her voice.
"But what did you do?"
"Why, I hurried to pull the embers together and throw on more spruce
boughs. A cougar is cautious around a fire."
There was another silence, then, "I was thinking of your little,
white-faced woman," said Miss Armitage. "She baffles me. Was she your
bravest woman or just your anemone? Would you mind telling me?"
"So you were thinking of her. That's odd; so was I." Tisdale changed his
position, turning to lean on the edge of the porch with his elbow resting
on the floor. "But it was that Gordon setter there that reminded me of
her. Her dog had the same points, though he had been better trained." He
paused briefly, then said: "She was both. She was like that small, white
flower which grows in the shelter of the Alaska woods--sweet and modest
and frail looking--yet she was the bravest woman and the strongest when it
came to endurance I ever knew."
"It happened, of course, in Alaska," Miss Armitage ventured, breaking the
pause. "You knew her there?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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